There’s always been one thing that has confused me since I was a teenager: Why do people conflate money with intelligence? I’m unsure when my eyes were opened to the fact that rich people aren’t geniuses but I remember it happened pretty early in my life. With that said, I do know what opened my eyes. All of the rich kids in my classes were fucking retarded. I was confused by this pattern for the longest and I am unsure when the connection was finally made, but it was. I feel like there’s one acquisition that proves it: Disney buying Lucas Films. Ha, you thought I was going to say Musk buying Twitter. No, Disney managed to fuck up something more than Musk did, but no one talks about how badly Disney fucked up.
If you’re wondering why Disney’s buyout of Lucas Films was worse than Musk’s purchase of Twitter let me explain. Sure, Musk tanked the value of Twitter, by a fuckton. However, Musk is still trying to let Twitter be Twitter while expanding into an awful super app. (I’m going to write about super apps in another post) Disney bought Lucas Films and then decided to strip away everything people liked about Lucas Films. Extended Universe? Gone. Lucas Arts? Gone. Their comic publishing line, which was actually one of the best in the market. Yep, gone. Disney paid 4 billion dollars for Lucas Films because of these ventures they closed down, granted most of it was because of LucasArts. Yes, Disney paid 4 billion smackaroos only to close down the businesses that made Lucas Films worth that amount. Musk just managed to drive away most advertisers, refuse to pay bills, and get sued out the wazoo by former staff for contract violations. It’s weird to downplay such massive things but at least he’s trying to keep Twitter as Twitter while expanding into new markets.
Not only did Disney immediately close all of the reasons Lucas Films was worth so much, they also nuked the cultural impact of Star Wars. Despite how awful the prequels were, people still loved Star Wars. The games, comics, cartoons, books, and toys were selling well. Yes, at this time the toys were selling well. For a small history lesson: At this point people hated George Lucas. People hated him to such a point a documentary was made about how awful Star Wars fans are and how they act like children. People were calling for Lucas’ head and for Star Wars to be “saved” from him. While the movies were hot shit everything else was amazing, and I say this as someone who hates Star Wars. Even at this strongly aggressive point in time towards the films, and George Lucas himself, Star Wars was still more of a cultural icon than what has happened under Disney, and Disney tried their best to become a cultural icon by fellating fan desires. Lucas didn’t give a fuck what fans thought, a true Chad.
To the people who want to try and argue that shutting down LucasArts was a good idea and “hindsight is 20/20”. No, fuck you. LucasArts was the most profitable section of Lucas Films at the time. This was after Forced Unleashed came out. Video games were massive. They didn’t even give LucasArts six months before closing their doors because they had just shut down both Propaganda Games and Black Rock studios. Rather than let Lucas Arts operate how it had been operating since the 80s, Disney shut them down because Disney was on another failing attempt into the video game industry. It’s not the game industry Disney, it is you. I would also like to point out this was after Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2. So, Disney has seen how letting an external studio operate while checking in could lead to popular games that make tons of money. They could’ve done this without needing to share money with another publisher. Instead they decided to sign an exclusive deal with EA and close down their newly purchased studio that was really far into development of some great looking titles. Again, I say these Star Wars games look great and I hate Star Wars. These rich executives were all fucking retards.
I feel it’s important to point out that Propaganda Games was originally part of TouchStone Games. You know, Disney’s mature film brand, which has been dead for 6 years now. They rolled the studio into Disney Interactive after killing TouchStone Games. Propaganda games were shut down after their Tron game failed to perform, because no one buys movie tie-in games anymore. I am bringing this up because Propaganda Games and Tron: Evolution shows how truly awful Disney’s entire existence in the game industry has been. Their mature gaming division was shut down after its only title, Turok 2008, sold over a million copies. Meaning, the title was a success. Disney shut down a successful publishing branch for no fucking reason. Not only was TouchStone Games a successful publisher, but they were successful from the get go. At this point new publishers like Brash Games were struggling. In the PS3/360 generation a lot of publishers folded, even long standing ones. New ones stood almost no chance and were happy if 1 out of 3 games were a success. TouchStone started out as a success.
Tron, on the other hand, got the studio shut down because of Disney’s meddling and forced time constraints to meet a movie’s deadline. Game development hasn’t worked like this since the PS1 was out. Sure, it works for shitty Wii shovelware minigame collections, and games meant for kids, but it doesn’t work for high budget HD games aimed at adults. Adults with critical thinking skills. Adults can tell if platforming, combat, movement, level design, story, and everything else is bad, kids can’t. Tron was even plagued with misery upon its release. On PC it was exclusive to Games For Windows Live, a service Microsoft had shut down twice by this point. This Games for Windows Live requirement is why I never bought Tron:Evolution on PC. I wasn’t sure if Games for Windows Live would exist next month. Microsoft had already shut down Shadowrun and other titles. Hell, in EU and Asia the services were getting less games and those that were Games for Windows Live exclusive in the US weren’t in other regions. Tron: Evolution also featured SecuROM. SecuROM is a DRM that is notorious for forcing you to rebuy products you own because of its self imposed limited installs. Not only did it limit your installs but you needed to have the internet to install anything with SecuROM, so they could check how many installs your disc had left. SecuROM also had a fantastic bug where installing a new GPU, CPU, and sometimes RAM would count as an install. If RAM counted as an install each new RAM stick used an install. If you ran out of installs SecuROM would stop the game from working. This meant upgrading your computer could ban you from games you purchased. This is why SecuROM was a major issue in getting people to buy Tron: Evolution. Eventually Disney discontinued SecuROM’s services for all of their titles. This means Tron: Evolution is 100% unplayable on PC, unless you crack it, because of Disney’s reliance on SecuROM. Yes, the game you purchased can’t be played anymore because Disney couldn’t update it to remove the DRM since the studio was closed down. This is why I think Propaganda Games, especially Tron: Evolution, shows how awful Disney’s understanding of the game industry is.
Now, here’s where things get a bit interesting. I knew some people who worked for Disney. I won’t say which products, because I don’t want Disney lawyers tracking down my homies. Disney was insanely controlling of their game studios. They had people who would monitor code to read every variable, git commit, comment, and more for offensive words. If you made a variable like int tooMuchShit they would track down who made the variable and write them up. They wanted nothing offensive in the code of any of their game studios (according to multiple people I knew who worked for Disney), even those they bought who made shooters and explosive racing games. A friend once told me a story of how a person got in trouble because of a line they added to the git commit story. If you don’t know. A git commit story is where everytime you add something to the git repo you add another line to the story. It’s like a nice team building game that lets you see everyone’s creativity and the craziness that ensues. This person used a word they thought was okay, but Disney disagreed. They were really upset over this commit and almost fired someone because of something that is impossible for anyone to see unless they have access to Disney’s internal servers. When I was told this story I immediately thought it was “nigga” being written by a black employee. No, it was a word you could hear on network TV. I can’t say which word, because that makes it easier to track down the people involved with this story, but I wouldn’t even consider it a swear word.
This type of control they insisted upon is why Disney constantly failed in the game industry, and it’s why I think they shut down LucasArts right away. They had games with cuss words, murder, zombies eating neighbors, and more. How could you enforce all those strict restrictions when your games were meant for mature audiences? Especially since they shutdown TouchStone Games after a successful first launch. I believe Disney tanked the value of Lucas Films, and the Star Wars IP, because of their insistence on control. The Extended Universe was full of all sorts of shit Disney wouldn’t allow. The books were meant for mature audiences and even had scenes of sexual assault in them. The comics were meant for teens, I never read them so I can’t comment on them. All of which went against Disney’s family friendly image.
These rich and stupid executives bought Lucas Films for their movie IPs. Ignoring that movies weren’t how Lucas Films made money. They bought an entire multimedia powerhouse without an idea of how to implement it into their multimedia powerhouse. They bought it knowing that it was incompatible with how they ran and operated things because these stupid ass rich executives thought it was still the 80s. Video games, books, comics, and all that cool shit? Just a fad. We can sell kids toys because their stupid fanboy/fangirl parents will buy it for them! Even though kids are known to avoid liking what their parents like around the age one would start to like Star Wars. Kids ain’t going to the movies to watch films with their parents. They’re playing games and 360 noscoping their friends. This is why I think the Disney buyout of Lucas Film is the prime example of being rich doesn’t mean you’re smart, and why it’s also a much bigger fuck up than Elon Musk buying Twitter. A group of stupid rich assholes bought and ruined a cultural icon by killing off what made it a modern day cultural icon. I believe if Lucas never sold Lucas Films people would still bitch about the movies, but all of it would still be a cultural icon.
If you’re wondering why I’m harping on Disney’s history in the game industry so much, that’s where the cultural zeitgeist is. Gaming is the top thing. Movies, books, comics, toys, and everything else fails to compare to videogames. Your kids most likely know who Rick from Rick and Morty is not because of the TV show. They know who Rick Sanchez is because of Fortnite. Your kids are learning about cultural icons from Fortnite, and other games. You can’t expect to sell merch to a new audience if you don’t have a store near their playground. If your store is still in the old district, the new audience will pass you up. Few people will travel to their parent’s playground. Of course, Disney just announced two new Star Wars games. However, one is a Dark Souls clone aimed at adults published by EA and the other is an Ubisoft collectathon-explore-every-section-of-this-giant-empty-map game. Y’know, an Ubisoft game. This will appeal to millennials and help Star Wars stay relevant, but now Star Wars is just trend chasing instead of making trends. It won’t be the cultural icon. It’ll copy the cultural icon from now on. Finally, as a Star Wars hater, these news games do nothing to bring me in. Meanwhile Star Wars Unleashed got me to read some of the books. 1313 sounded really awesome and was something I, a person who hates Star Wars, was going to pre-order. Now it’s do I want a popular product in Star Wars flavor, or vanilla. I’m choosing vanilla. All because a group of rich people made one of the dumbest decisions ever. Remember, money doesn’t equal intelligence.